Security News > 2020 > September > The Joys of Owning an ‘OG’ Email Account

When you own a short email address at a popular email provider, you are bound to get gobs of spam, and more than a few alerts about random people trying to seize control over the account.

If your account name is short and desirable enough, this kind of activity can make the account less reliable for day-to-day communications because it tends to bury emails you do want to receive.

About 16 years ago - back when you actually had to be invited by an existing Google Mail user in order to open a new Gmail account - I was able to get hold of a very short email address on the service that hadn't yet been reserved.

Naming the address here would only invite more spam and account hijack attempts, but let's just say the account name has something to do with computer hacking.

Probably for the same reason the Florida lady assumed I was a malicious hacker, my account constantly gets requests from random people who wish to hire me to hack into someone else's account.

News URL

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/09/the-joys-of-owning-an-og-email-account/